get at the old man and demonstrate his stove he could make the sale. He could cook all right, that feller.”

The colonel made no comment, and presently betook himself to his aunt. She was waiting for him in the parlor, playing solitaire. Through the open door the white bed that ought to have been[109] Archie’s was gleaming faintly. The colonel’s brows met.

[109]

“Well, Bertie? Did you find anything?” Mrs. Winter inquired smoothly.

“I’m afraid not; but here is the report.” He gave it to her, even down to the cigar wrapper.

“It doesn’t seem likely that Mr. Keatcham has anything to do with it,” said she. “He, no doubt, has stolen many a little railway, but a little boy is too small game.”

“Oh, I don’t suspect Keatcham; but I wish I had caught the elevator to-night. He looked at me in a mighty queer way.”

“Did you recognize his secretary as any one whom you ever saw before?” asked Mrs. Winter.

“I can’t say,” was the answer, given with a little hesitation. “I’m not sure.”

“I don’t think I quite understand you, Bertie; better make a clean breast of all you know. I’m getting a little worried myself.”

The colonel reached across the cards and tapped his aunt’s arm affectionately. He felt the warmest impulse toward sympathy for her that he had ever known; it glistened in his eyes. Mrs. Winter’s cheeks slowly crimsoned; she turned her head, exclaiming, did she hear a noise; but the[110] colonel’s keen ears had not been warned. “Poor woman,” he thought, “she is worried to death, but she will not admit it.”

[110]

“Now, Bertie,” said Mrs. Winter calmly, but her elbow fell on her cards and spoiled a very promising game of Penelope’s Web, “now, Bertie, what are you keeping back?”

Then, at last, the colonel told her of his experience in Chicago. She heard him quite without comment, and he could detect no shift of emotion in her demeanor of absorbed but perfectly calm attention, unless a certain tension of attitude and feature (as if, he phrased it, she were “holding herself in”) might be so considered. And he was not sure of this. When he came to the words which stuck in his throat, the sentence about Miss Smith, she smiled frankly, almost laughed.

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